them all were many virtues which have justly endeared her to the English nation. Her maternal regard for her people and wise political discretion cannot be sufficiently extolled, and more than atone for her many defects of character. The first three books of the "Faery Queen" contain a large proportion of the excellence of the work. Though the latter books have less continuity of splendor, they all contain innumerable single stanzas and short passages of exquisite beauty, and a few pictures on a more extended canvas, which are reckoned among the most remarkable of the work, such as the prophetic satire in anticipation of the Liberty and Equality philosophy, in the second canto of the fifth book. TheShepherd's Calendar" and "Mother Hubbard's Tale" are the most remarkable works of Spenser, written before the "Faery Queen." The former work is remarkable for the variety of measures in which it is composed. A panegyric on Queen Elizabeth in the fourth eclogue is the most spirited of its lyric passages. Spenser's" Epithalamium" on his own marriage with the Elizabeth whose wooing is related by him in a series of eighty-eight sonnets is accounted the most splendid spousal verse in the language. He concludes it with the true prophecy that it shall stand a perpetual monument of his happiThere is nothing in English poetry more beautiful than the passage in which he describes his youthful bride :

ness.

"Behold, while she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks,
And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain
Like crimson dyed in grain ;

That even the angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,

Forget their service and about her fly,

Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair
The more they on it stare."

In fancy and invention Spenser is unrivalled. He displays but little comic talent, occasional visionary sublimity, and a pensive tenderness often approaching to the finest pathos. His versification is to the last degree flowing and harmonious. In the stanza which he first made use of, and which is called by his name and recommended by its fulness and richness, its flowing melody, and the stately cadence with which it closes, it has been asserted that "of the many who have been led to follow his example, no one has equalled and few have approached him." Though never intensely impassioned, he completely holds us by his fancy and invention. In the "Faery Queen," though we are wearied by his "dark conceit," and often fain to drop the allegory altogether, our admiration for its pure poesy never flags.

Spenser is the true poet of chivalry and romance; to read him is like floating in a gorgeous dream through enchanted Venice, in the mellow noon of an Italian night, showered by silvery moonbeams, fanned by airs that have lingered in orange groves, and serened by rhythmical cadence of rippling oar, and song of gondolier. In youth and in riper years we turn to the "Faery Queen" with ever-new delight, as to an April bank thick-dotted with violets, or a sunny woodland slope redolent of rose-tinged arbutus.

Spenser's faults are truly said to have arisen out of the fulness of his riches. His power of circumstantial description betrayed him into an elaboration which often becomes merely tedious minuteness; while his wonderful command of musical language led him often to protract his narrative till the attention becomes exhausted. Diffusiveness of style was a fault common to the age in which he wrote; and indeed we find it in all poetical composition antecedent to Shakespeare who foreran his age while

Spenser, as has been observed, "leaned towards the olden time," and was censured by his cotemporaries and their successors for introducing "new graftes of old and withered words." Conciseness of style, one of the prime excellencies of poetical composition, we may not look for in the infancy of the art, or even in its lusty youth; it is alone the product of its ripe and rounded maturity. Macaulay, indeed, asserts that "the great works of imagination which have appeared in the Dark Ages most command our admiration; " but let us not admit with him that" as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines." The "poetical temperament may indeed decline with civilization;" but the poet, we trust, is the indigenous and unfailing product of all time.

It must be remembered that in Spenser's day life rumbled leisurely along in slow-coaches. The man who could afford to execute eighty-eight elaborate sonnets for the wooing of but one fair lady, had surely not attained to our modern facility in "popping the question;" and we may at least believe him to have had more leisure for both wooing and rhyming than is allotted to a busy poet in this hurried nineteenth century. If he could but have superadded to his marvellous fancy and invention, his flowing harmony, and exquisite sense of beauty, the concise elegance which so captivates us in the verse of Longfellow and of Holmes, the "Faery Queen," certainly not in six books, possibly in one, would have been entitled to stand in proud pre-eminence, the eternal master-piece of the art!

Though Spenser presents to us a few pictures over which modern decorum would draw a veil, he offends merely against good taste, never against good morals. And it has been justly and beautifully observed that such. passages in Spenser differ from the covert form in which

licentiousness is insinuated in many modern poems, as the naked majesty of Diana differs from the voluptuous undress of Aspasia." The absence of an interesting story, the want of human character and passion in the passages that carry on the story, such as it is, have been pronounced no defects in the "Faery Queen," since the poetry is only left thereby so much the purer. "If Spenser was not the greatest of poets," observes Craik, "we may truly say his poetry is the most poetical of all poetry." Here is a picture from Spenser's allegory,a masker from the pageant raised by the enchanter, to beguile the sad heart of Amoret:

"The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy

Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer,
Matchable either to that imp of Troy

Whom Jove did love, and choose his cup to bear;

Or that same dainty lad which was so dear

To great Alcides that whenas he died,

He wailed woman-like with many a tear,

And every wood, and every valley wide,

He filled with Hylas' name; the nymphs eke Hylas cried.

"His garment neither was of silk nor say,
But painted plumes in goodly order dight,
Like as the sunburnt Indians do array
Their tawny bodies in the proudest plight.

As these same plumes, so seemed he vain and light,
That by his gait might easily appear;

For still he fared as dancing in delight,

And in his hand a windy fan did bear,

That in the idle air he moved still here and there."

But half of Spenser's original design of the "Faery Queen" was finished. Six of the twelve adventures and moral virtues were produced; but length of days was not granted the poet to complete on earth his moral and poetical gallery. It has been conjectured that the remain

ing half was lost, but this supposition is almost groundless. Unfortunately the world saw only some fragments more of the work. The last touching and prophetic notes of this sweet singer may be found in the eighth imperfect canto, broken off abruptly, as if the poet had sung no further, but gone up to eternal harmonies with these last words upon his lips:

"Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd,

Of that same time when no more change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmly stayed

Upon the pillours of Eternity

That is contrayre to mutability;

For all that moveth doth in change delight;

But thenceforth all shall rest eternally

With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight.

O that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath's sight!"